“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”

Since the Applings are not blood, but married into my Stanley tree, I really need to finish up with them and move on. Francis B Appling was certainly an interesting guy and through him I learned a lot about the Soutnern Claims Commission and post-Civil War life in Alabama. I think I could continue to research that surname for months to come! So I gotta give myself a nudge (shove!) in another direction…

Her younger brother Wesley Paul McBurnett was killed in action in France during WWI- my only ancester (so far) to die in World War I

She was one of the main reasons that I got interested in genealogy. My Dad loves to tell fascinating stories about his “Indian Grandmother”!

I have done some preliminary research, enough to document at least those 5 husbands and 2 sets of children. I even met a “cousin” online, a lady related to my Dad’s uncle Gene Hall (by Dovie’s 1st husband, my great-grandfather William Earl Hall). I found Dovie’s McBurnett family in several census enumerations and even a reference to Dovie and William Earl Hall in a Chickasaw Nation Marriages 1895-1907 database. So either Dovie or William or both were most likely Chickasaw.